Combat realism as applicable to stats

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A question has been on my mind recently: what is an acceptable level of damage caused by each party in combat by the weapons/abilities that they use, relative to their level of competency in any applicable skill?

In other words, if I successfully shoot an enemy combatant with a shotgun, should damage rendered and effects caused be highly damaging regardless of whether or not my character is skilled with shotguns and whether or not that enemy is a higher level than me?

For reference:

New-school Fallout system represents the "levelled dmg" philosophy. Your weapons have a base level of damage that is low and the damage the weapons do increases with an increase in the relevant skill (Ene. Weps, Unarmed).

Old-school Fallout system represents the "threshold dmg" philosophy. Each weapon has a set maximum and minimum level of potential damage. Regardless of your competency in the relevant skill, the weapons will not deal damage higher or lower than their potential damage rate.

My custom Fallout 3 and New Vegas system via self-modding is the same to the below example.

Potential = Calculated dmg.

Practical example: Lvl 1 PC one-shots Super Mutant in head with hunting rifle. The opposite would also happen.

Depends on what else the combat involves: is the hit/damage system supposed to be an abstraction of other things which aren't present as features or not. It's one thing if the combat system allows you to simply move and shoot (or choose between a few shooting options), and another if the combat system allows you to spend a specific number of action points aiming at the legs but you still have a chance to miss so you actually only hit one knee which is permanently crippled and the rest of the pellets hit your squad member who was unfortunately standing too close to the enemy, inducing bleeding which must be bandaged and so on.

Both systems you described could potentially work well in different combat systems (and both can work horribly if they for example clash with how other gameplay/gameworld elements are presented).

I think the best principle to adhere to is this - weapons (especially firearms) should remain similarly damaging regardless of who is using them for as long as they are in condition to use them properly.
It's a bit different for melee combat, because there's arguably more room for skill to influence actual damage done.
The important thing is to differentiate between users of various proficiency - beginners, vs. experts vs. masters. I don't think if there's any way to establish a golden rule for this (say, masters should be 179% more lethal than beginners),
but combatants of higher skill needn't fear the less skilled, unless special conditions apply - say an expert warrior should expext to defeat the beginner in a fair fight most of the time, if not at all times.

How the hell do you put all that into a working system?
Personally, I like to keep the damage output as constant as possible (and the number of hit points while we're at it), as long as there are other parameters out there that only indirectly translate into the damage output to highlight the difference in proficiency (number of attacks, critical chance, ammo conservation, reload speed, stuff like that).
For an example of a succesful approach, see how it's done in Brigade E5 series - weapon skill is essentially meaningless when you're firing at close range - a greenhorn will hit stuff just as good as a veteran at 30 meters. However, ask the same two to hit difficult a target at 200 meters with an unscoped rifle, and you'll see a difference. Ask them to hit something when shot at or wounded or bleeding and you'll see a difference.
I think it's a pretty good result to strive for IF a degree of realism is what you strive for, because it's ultimately about your design goals.

"realism" in games doesn't matter, unless it's a simulator where realism is for its own's sake.

It's kinda silly to argue about F2 "weapon dmg realism" where its turn-based system is completely unrealistic in the first place (e.g. you can't react to what the enemy is doing on their turn).

Yeah, basically this.

Still, it's more "realistic" to have weapons deal damage regardless of your ability, like in FO or JA2. This system could be refined with impale mechanics from Basic Roleplaying (P&P game, Call of Cthulhu, etc.). In the game you have a chance to score more damage if you roll under 1/5 of your skill. So, everyone gets a chance to deal decent damage but skilled folks will score even more at regular basis. Not sure if original BRP covered firearms in this manner, but it's only natural to house rule it to work like described earlier.

I really dislike firearm damage scaling with level. It makes no sense, except for that theoretically you can target more "sensitive" body parts. Still, that's kind of a long shot and I would imagine that a headshot is a headshot.

As for melee, the best way to handle different skill levels is to apply a penalty to whoever is at a lower level. If you are a beginner swordsman, for instance, it should be very difficult to hit a master swordsman, while two experts will be relatively evenly matched. The downside of such a setup, though, is that you lose a little bit of nuance, because now balance is a simple matter of "am I the same level as the enemy?" and anyone lower will probably get his/her ass kicked.

tl;dr version, RPGs aren't realistic, they're supposed to be fun. Plausibility and consistency is what's important, not so much realism.

Use whatever works with the rest of your system, but the thing to look for is that the combat isn't decided solely by the stats of the combatants. Or worse, decided mostly by just a single stat like Experience Level.

Yes, if I shoot you point-blank with a shotgun it's gonna fuck you up regardless of the fact that I've never handled one in my life. It's less about "realism", and more about logic...

That's retarded, don't do that

Yes, you can react. It's just abstracted through AC, you're supposed to larp you're diving around for cover, parrying blows and what not.

Simulation of projectile weapon mastery and effectiveness just doesn't work for me. Aiming, reloading/knocking an arrow, and dealing with weapon malfunctions might be abstractable in stats but ranged weapons outclassed melee except maybe in face to face anyone's game situations. Plus they essentially function the same as melee weapons with a lot less walking up to the enemy in rpgs. Press attack and see if you hit (I concede that people who really like playing RPGs see this as the point for the most part).

Skill-bullet-damage relationship is normally represented by increased to-hit allowing to target more critical locations. So an additional skill-based damage modifier is redundant.

Well, if you have such a system it's redundant. But for something like say Civ, it's perfectly reasonable to have experienced troops with the same equipment deal more damage than green troops. Modeling hit locations and accuracy on such a scale would be silly.

And note that when it comes to scale, it's not so much a matter of how many units or timeframe or anything, but the amount of combat. If you're expected to resolves hundreds of battles in the space of a few hours, regardless of whether it is with a single unit or a nation's worth, detailed fights are not the way to go. There's also the matter of complexity building upon itself exponentially- if you have an elemental damage system, AND a hit location system, things are already pretty fucking complex, and adding even more things like weapon speeds, ranges, and multiple types of defense (reduction/resistence/avoidance) would quickly make things unwieldy for anything but the most heavily rationed combat. Imagine playing through wizardry/might and magic with all the things I mentioned. As it is it already includes simplistic elements of a lot of those things and they mostly get swept under the rug when making decisions- nobody gives a fuck what elemental damage bonus their weapon has, they just pick the biggest damage bonus. That isn't really good design, a decision the player will never bother to think about is a waste of development time that could have been spent on something more interesting.

You can't... Say, a mutant comes out from around the corner. In a realistic system (like Jagged Alliance games), based on stats either you or mutant react to this encounter and if you're the first to react, you can take an action based on AP left from your last turn. In Fallout, you can't do anything since it's mutant's turn. FO's tb system isn't a tb "simulation" of real-time like JA's, it's a tb system like chess where figures take turns to move.

Besides FO's problem isn't realism, it's balance. Aiming for anything but eyes(for damage)/body(for accuracy) is pointless. Training Unarmed is pointless (except for the San Francisco / New Reno boxing matches, but even then you can get 100 from a trainer IIRC). Throwing is a gimmick (Grenades too expensive/rare until lategame to be used frequently enough to justify investment in Throwing).

Have you tried to seriously cheese it? I'm talking Jinxed + HtH Evade? It's hilarious, I tell ya.
Slap some Bonus HtH + Better Criticals + Slayer on top and you're good to go.

Originally, Fallout had a simulation system. Then they lost the licence and had to create a new system in a few weeks and came up with Special.

It is pretty glaring when you fire a shotgun blast into someone's face and they get 2 damage or it somehow misses, but I agree with others that melee is somewhat different. The force of a swinging axe depends on the wielder's attributes.

The only thing firearms proficiency should alter (aside from accuracy) is critical hit percentage. Like everyone else said melee is a bit different but it's hard to pull off realism in turn based games.

I think it highly depends on the level of abstraction that your system uses.
The higher the abstraction, the more influence of skill on total damage the system can stand.

The problem is mostly how much abstraction your system can take without damaging gameplay and "gaming experience".
For instance, in a 3rd person strategy/tactical game you can take relatively much abstraction, in an rpg, esp. a 1st person real-time rpg it quickly "feels wrong".

Yeah but Slayer is a lvl24 perk... Unless you are a completionist you won't have it until super-late-game. And even then high-tier ranged weapons are strictly better.

Though I'm perfectly fine with that one detail - balance in single player games isn't a big deal, in general. (say, a veteran might go for a gimped build, while a beginner will try to powergame - both will have fun). The problem is that when *everything* is unbalanced, a "powergaming" route will be boring - it's always that same one path...

But in an easy game like Fallout, anyone can pick any path and still manage along somewhat.

Fallout isn't a game about balance, but doing whatever you like. At least if you figure out the options possible to you and have enough levels.

A blade to the gut is a blade to the gut, doesn't matter if it's a enraged viking or a terrified woman shoving it into your belly.

After reading about all the BS HP is supposed to represent it would seem that from Lvl 1 everyone has superhuman reflexes and/or dies from shallow cuts and bruises eventually. You can either except HP as a necessarilly simple variable representation of the video game 'life' or you can make up something like Dwarf Fortress (does DF even have gameplay magic, and how does that work with the damage system if it does?).

No it's not quite the same at all, even if both hurt a lot.

A terrified woman may forget to twist the blade or hit you in a non-optimal way or something.

5:00 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL39jJN9hHM

It sure is. The viking might be able to be more accurate or hit more frequently or whatever because he's more skilled, but you bleed just the same.

Relatively small damage variation considering you still have a new hole in your belly.